Dear Prudence Counsels Mom Who Found Her Daughter Masturbating With A Hand Mixer

I’m a regular reader of Slate’s advice column, “Dear Prudence,” which counsels letter writers on problems great and small. While the questions fairly often have to do with matters pertaining to sex, this is the first time I’ve seen Prudie advise a letter writer who caught a tween masturbating with a kitchen utensil. Which may or may not have been suggested by the letter writer’s sister, a ‘cool aunt.’ From the letter:

… This weekend, I came home to hear a commotion in the kitchen and found my daughter holding the hand mixer against her body. Embarrassed, she said her aunt had “taught her this trick.” Now, I can easily imagine she may have just thrown that out as an inappropriate joke, but I wouldn’t put it past her to have meant it seriously. Obviously, our daughter wouldn’t be the first 13-year-old girl put in an awkward situation to lie, either.

Well then.

Part of me is concerned, honestly. In a situation like this, one wonders about the difference between a bawdy joke and sexually abusive inappropriateness. Replace the word “aunt” with “uncle” and I would be freaking out. However, I agree with Prudie that “it could well be that your daughter point blank asked her auntie for masturbation tips, and that’s OK.” We don’t really know, and the letter writer doesn’t either. Without that information, it’s hard to know whether boundaries were crossed. Overall it sounds as if the letter writer thought the interaction between aunt and niece was ultimately innocent. I’m also the ‘cool aunt’ (who doesn’t have any children of her own) and I can definitely relate to being caught off-guard and saying something to a kid that you later wish you could have worded differently.

But I have to wonder — why doesn’t someone just buy this poor girl a vibrator? In defense of the aunt’s supposed masturbation “tips” to play with a whirring hand mixer, Prudie wrote, “I doubt you would have come up with a better one.” Actually, I can come up with one — an actual sex toy. [P.S. Doesn't anyone masturbate with their damn HAND anymore? -- Amelia] Clearly she’s curious; this tween has alreadyhad a masturbation session awkwardly interrupted. May as well run with it, right? Exploring one’s sexuality at that age is completely normal for boys and girls. But for the sake of the kitchenware (and the vacuum cleaner), perhaps she should be gifted a more appropriate means of bodily self-exploration. Maybe the tween won’t even use it. But she’ll learn a very important lesson: jilling off to the communal family hand mixer in the kitchen is not okay!

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